rivers and roads
by moeten
Summary: the way things change.


_APPARENTLY I HAD A LOT OF TED FEELINGS._

 _set directly after 'last words.' title and summary both from 'rivers and roads' by the head and the heart._

* * *

After the funeral and wake and Crocodile Dundee, the group splits up for the night. Marshall and Lily stay with his mother, and Ted, Robin, and Barney decamp to a Holiday Inn. Marshall's older brother gives them a ride. Ted tries to start a conversation a few times, but Barney and Robin are both lost in thought and Martin is subdued.

They'd all checked in earlier. Ted texts Marshall to let him know they made it to the hotel safely, Barney looks restlessly around the lobby, Robin clutches her elbows and bites her lip. She's the first one to admit it. "Hey, I don't really wanna be alone right now." It's been a long day, long enough that they're all a little on edge and honest.

Ted exhales a breath, goes over and slings an arm around Robin's shoulder. "Wanna watch another movie?"

"There's a liquor store down the street," Barney says. He always knows this kind of thing.

They walk down the road and load up on Smartfood popcorn, salted peanuts, and India pale ale, and walk back with arms full of shopping bags. Ted texts Marshall again, and then Lily ( _he's doing ok. judy went to sleep!)_ , and doesn't comment when Barney and Robin fall back a few steps to smoke. The air is cloudy and wet, and the sidewalks are slushy. Ted looks at the sky and his breath frosting under the streetlamps and wonders if it's going to snow.

Robin offers him a cigarette, but he declines.

They go to Barney's room because his is on the highest floor, which somehow seems important. Instead of the single bed Ted has in his room, Barney has two beds, one covered in neatly laid out clothing. "You needed five suits for a three day trip?" Robin asks as Ted opens the blinds on the window. The hotel is in the middle of town, but the buildings seem low and dark.

"Six," Barney corrects. Ted turns in time to see him gesturing up and down his own body. Robin's lips curl. She reaches up and unclips her hair, her attention on the window. Ted watches her dark hair tumble down her neck, wavy from being pinned up all day. It's a strangely erotic sight. That's the last thing he wants to think about right now. He catches Barney looking, too.

"What do you guys wanna watch?" Robin asks.

"Something funny," Ted says.

Barney refuses to move any of his suits ("they might wrinkle!"), so they all pile onto the other bed. There's some negotiation over food and drink and elbows and position, but Robin ends up in the middle, Ted by the nightstand, Barney with the remote. He threatens to turn it to Cinemax but goes to TV Land instead, old sitcoms from the fifties and seventies and eighties. Ted's never seen this episode of _Happy Days_ , but nothing in it surprises him. The bed is large enough that they don't have to squash together to watch TV, but small enough that Ted is aware of the nearness of his friends all the same: the warmth where Robin's arm is pressed to his, the smell of her perfume and even a hint of Barney's cologne and his own aftershave. They don't talk much. Ted texts Lily a couple more times — once, Robin takes his phone from him and she and Barney collaborate on their own message ("Of course you two would need to work together to come up with something nice to say to someone," Ted snarks.

"Sorry we're not big sappy girls like you," Barney snarks back, and Robin elbows Ted gently in the ribs).

They talk a little, and play a game where they overdub _Cheers_ with their own dialogue, but they don't talk about the important things. But Ted thinks about them. About Marshall — who had insisted Ted should leave with Barney and Robin, insisted he was okay, and how Ted had known better, known there was no way his best friend could be okay. In some way, that Marshall would never be okay again. He'd checked with Lily and she'd promised to take care of him. But when Marshall wakes up in the morning, his dad will still be dead.

Ted remembers how devastated he was when his parents divorced. He wasn't really close to his parents, they said they were happier for it, but it had still felt like a physical blow, like he'd lost something, lost _them_ in some way. And they were both still alive. He should visit them both, talk to them more, appreciate them more…

He knows it's a little different for Barney and Robin. Barney, who _has_ no father, Robin, who is distant with her mother and estranged from her father. He wonders if they understand, what they're thinking about as they sit here with him…

Ted hopes they don't get it. Hopes they and Lily and he will never _have_ to get it. Hopes Marshall will never have this happen to him every again. _But everyone's parents die_ , he thinks, staring blankly at _I Love Lucy_. And hell, someday, all of _them_ would be old and grey and the odds are that Ted wouldn't die first, and if he did then the other four would feel like this about him, and Ted's future wife, and his future kids, and Marshall and Lily's kids… It makes him dizzy, makes his breath catch in his throat and eyes feel hot and chest feel tight. He reaches for Robin's hand, because he needs something, just then — her hand, warm and comforting. He touches her leg, fingers curl around her wrist. She doesn't really respond, but just feeling her pulse under his fingers helps, the warmth and softness of her skin.

It occurs to Ted that maybe she's fallen asleep. He looks away from the TV. Her eyes are closed, brow slightly furrowed, or maybe it's just the light from the television, making her look pale and restless. It's hard to make out her expression: her head is leaning against Barney's shoulder, her whole body curled slightly towards him. It gives Ted a pang. A bitter feeling. He doesn't think it's jealousy, he hopes it isn't jealousy — but something in him twists and hurts.

Barney is staring straight ahead, at the TV, like he doesn't even notice Robin's body or weight against him, his fingers curled tight around his bottle, his expression blank, very blank. But Ted's known Barney for ten years now. _Blank_ is what Barney is when he's pretending.

Lonely.

That's what Ted feels. He wishes Robin had fallen asleep against _him_ , that he was the one she'd curl up against — maybe it's an accident, a trick of her center of gravity, Barney's cologne versus Ted's aftershave, but he wishes it was him, him with someone warm and soft against him, guard down and relaxed… someone he could lean against, cuddle up to, feel…

He can remember cuddling with Robin, back in the day. He thinks of Zoey, for some reason. He looks back up at Barney, who is still watching TV, whose posture is stiff and unresponsive. He's still holding Robin's wrist.

Ted lets go, clears his throat, climbs off the bed. "Bathroom," he mutters to Barney. Barney grunts in reply, unmoving.

Ted does have to pee, it turns out, and then he washes his hand and leaves the water running for a long minute. The lights are too strong; he looks washed out and exhausted in the mirror. He keeps thinking about Robin, sleeping on Barney's shoulder. Of Marshall and Lily. Are they sleeping? Can they sleep? Or is Marshall lying awake with Lily pressed up beside him, trying to distract him, talking about work and gossip and lighter things, asking him questions about Nessie or aliens to get him talking and thinking of better things. Or maybe Marshall is asleep with Lily as the big spoon. Maybe Barney has put his arm around Robin, his thumb stroking at her shoulder. He wouldn't rest his head on hers, but he'd turn it towards her a little, so his mouth is almost touching her temple, his breath tickling her forehead a little. And Robin would sigh and curl herself closer to him…

Ted turns the water off, and feels old and tired and lonely and sad.

When he comes back into the main room, Barney hasn't moved, and Robin's mouth has fallen open in her sleep. Ted points with his thumb towards the door. "Hey, I think I'm gonna… head to my room," he says, awkward, because he can't stay while things are like this.

Barney's eyes snap to him, and he blinks, his gaze darting towards Robin and towards Ted again. "Oh, yeah, right. It's late." Ted isn't going to say or suggest anything, but Barney reaches for Robin and shakes her shoulder gently, the one not pressed up against him. His whole body tilts towards her when he does it, and to Ted it looks like they're about to kiss. He stands there like an idiot. "Hey, dude, Robin, you totally fell asleep," Barney is saying quietly.

Robin's knees draw up a little as she wakes, and she doesn't move away for a second. It's agonizing, standing there; Ted can't breathe. He's never thought about it, not since Barney and Robin broke up last year, but he's _sure_ they're about to kiss and right now he wants to flee the room, just leave them to it, Barney and Robin, Marshall and Lily…

On the bed, no one moves for a painful few seconds, then, in some unspoken agreement, Barney draws away, Robin scoots over, and they climb off the bed on opposite sides. "Jesus, I can't believe I fell asleep like that," Robin complains, fixing her hair as Barney straightens his clothes.

"It's like two in the morning," Barney says, checking his watch.

"Goddammit," Robin mutters. They're not looking at one another.

"We have an early flight tomorrow, we should probably all go to bed," Ted says, and they both look at him guiltily, and he feels himself smile and his stomach knot. He wishes suddenly he'd just left instead of going to the toilet, left them to sleep, that would have been the right thing to do, the better thing, but he's also glad he woke them, glad he won't be the only one alone tonight. He thinks it, and he hates himself a little.

"Yeah," Robin says vaguely.

"'Night," Barney says, unknotting his tie with one hand and clearing his bed of snacks with the other.

"'Night," says Ted. Robin doesn't say anything, just holds the door open for Ted on the way out.

They ride the elevator down together in silence. Ted doesn't know what to say, and he's pretty sure Robin is trying to avoid awkward subjects. They go down a floor, and then another. "It's been a long day," Ted says. He means for it to be a blanket statement, an excuse for Robin to latch onto and use if she wants — but his voice is tight and he finds himself taking a deep breath, too deep for an elevator at two AM.

The elevator dings again and they arrive on Robin's floor. She turns towards him, probably to say goodnight. "How are you holding up?" Robin asks instead.

"I've been better," Ted says with as much self deprecation as he can muster. He doesn't know how to word it, how to begin to explain. Marshall's father is dead and someday other people will die, Marshall is grieving, Lily is grieving, Ted is grieving for a man he only met a few times, for his loved ones, for himself, for knowing everyone has someone who loves them but him, for knowing that _isn't_ true and his friends love him like he loves them, but knowing that on some level it's not the same, it's _not_ , it's not, that he has no one he can collapse against or hold or _touch_ , that it'd be selfish to ask that of Marshall or Lily, that Barney sucks at it, that Robin hates it, that they have one another and he's smiling as best he can in an elevator in St. Cloud.

"Yeah, me too," Robin says. The elevator doors shut again as she looks at him, with a serious expression that makes Ted think of rooftops and sitting on the steps and better times, but also of her hand on his as she sighs _Oh, Ted_ , like she knows him and loves him but there's a gulf between them even so. He'll never be over her completely, he knows. Not while she looks at him like that.

"Hey," she says. He's almost startled, because she reaches for his hand, holds his limp fingers in hers. But she doesn't sigh, she looks him straight in the eyes and raises her eyebrows a little. "Don't get all noble, Ted."

He kind of can't help but smile. "What do you mean?"

"All self-sacrificing and strong and painless. You're allowed to feel sad too."

 _No, I'm not_ , he thinks, and has the sense not to say. It's his job to take care of Marshall and help Lily and keep an eye on Barney and… whatever it is he and Robin do, live together and bicker and move on with their lives without looking back.

" _Ted_ ," she says, reading his mind.

"I'm not being noble."

"You're being noble," she counters, smiling a little. "Let people take care of you."

"Are you even allowed to lecture me on that?" Ted asks.

"My right as your ex-girlfriend," Robin says, quirking up one corner of her mouth. "I'm allowed to call you out on emotional crap."

"Is that how it works?" He smiles back, but all at once he means it and Robin's expression fades as she thinks about it, her eyes darting a little to the side. He thinks of Barney and Robin on the bed, Barney waking her up. He wonders what would have happened if Barney hadn't. He thinks she's thinking of the same thing.

"Take care of yourself, Mosby," Robin says, shifting the conversation back. She presses the _door open_ button on the elevator as quick punctuation.

"I will," he promises, and means it, and thinks of Robin and Victoria and Stella, Karen and Natalie and the Arcadian and yachts. And Robin, again, in the past and right now and ten minutes earlier.

Robin puts her hands on his shoulders and then hugs him, a good hug, a solid hug, her arms folding around his neck and body pressed to his. Ted wraps his arms around her and feels her pressed against him, warm and soft, closes his eyes and takes a good deep breath of it, the feeling of being touched and held and cared for. Comfort. Love.

He pulls away first. "Thanks," he says.

Robin smiles at him, warm, knowing. "Goodnight," she says, stepping out of the elevator.

Ted pushes the button to his floor and leans against the wall as he watches her walk away through the closing doors. He yawns, suddenly, hugely, his whole body stiffening and then relaxing, feeling a little bit better, a little bit warmer and calmer.

The elevator dings open on his floor and he realizes, smiling faintly, without jealousy, that she had smelled a bit like Barney's cologne.


End file.
